Arts and Crafts Borders from the Calendar of Golden Thoughts of 1912

The Calendar of Golden Thoughts was published by Barse and Hopkins printing company in 1911. It was a calendar for the year 1912, but it also served as a sampler of their type, printers ornaments and borders. It had a page for every week and each page featured a different decorative border with an inspiring quote in decorative type with ornamental embellishments. It was an attractive example of craft printing of the period, hand assembled bound with tied string and sold packaged in an attractive display box.

The type and borders in the package are very much in the arts and crafts or early art deco style, similar in many respects to the types of designs favored by the Roycroft Arts and Crafts movement in New York in the early 1900s. The type featured in the calendar includes many different styles similar to some of the fonts we’ve done from that period like Valentin, Agravain and Albemarle. In addition to the great samples of early type and ornaments the calendar includes 40 unique borders, all of them created in a two-tone process using mortised cut brass plates. All of them are printed in red and black, but it’s remarkably easy to change the colors using the “select color range” tool in Adobe Photo shop. The style of the border designs is highly varied, from floral styles to some which look moorish to some which are mechanical aspect.

We’ve collected the images from the calendar together into a special package. It includes all 40 borders separated from the text, cleaned up and ready to use. It also includes all the original page images plus a PDF of the complete calendar. You can also download a PDF sampler of the calendar to view all the images.

The complete package can be purchased for $49 from our ONLINE STORE. And through the 10th of February you can get it for $10 off with the coupon code KALENDS.

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